Strategy Performance Change 

Business Advisors Network

Newsletter

2012 / no.1
Greetings!
  
The more we work with our methodology, the clearer it becomes that even in more complex and seemingly desperate situations, groups end up narrowing what really matters to three or four issues that are somehow intertwined and critical to their collective success. Once clarity has emerged from confusion and the myriad of individual perspectives about any given issue, agreement around what needs to happen next flows naturally. 
 
We have also found that marketing our approach relies less on our ability to convince our clients that this is the right way, as much as on their own conviction that change can happen only when people are on the same page.

Here are a few articles that discuss where this applies with full force: family businesses, how to define and implement a new strategy, and how to build leadership.

Sincerely,

 

Alain Bolea

 

The Fundamentals of a Successful Strategy
 
Misunderstandings about the nature and purpose of strategy abound. Some business people confuse the analysis of competitive forces as the strategy itself. Others equate strategy with their annual budgeting plan. For many strategy remains a vague, powerless concept that does not apply to them.

At its purest, a strategy is what you want to accomplish as an organization and the steps you need to accomplish it. Strategy, therefore, is important to all organizations because it gives them a context for the everyday decisions that move the organization in the desired direction.  Michael Porter, the Harvard University strategy professor, states: "...strategy is completely useless unless the result of the strategy process... is understood broadly. The #1 purpose of strategy is alignment. It is really getting all the people in the organization making good choices, reinforcing each other's choices because everyone is pursuing the common value proposition, the common way..."

To be an effective tool, a strategy must fulfill the organization's major objective of remaining fully relevant to its stakeholders over the long run. What it comes down to is whether the combined efforts of leadership and staff can create sustainable economic value, that is to say, generate outputs that are greater than its inputs.

So how does a strategy help an organization create and sustain economic value? The main mechanism is to make clear to everyone how the organization is going to deploy its resources to tackle two of the most challenging questions an organization can ask: 1) How effectively does it currently operate?; and 2) How well does it adapt to changing conditions? At the end of the day, organizations are economically sustainable when they can integrate and manage the complexity of their own system while managing the changes in their environment in a timely manner. Continue reading ...
Leadership in Family-Controlled Boards
A family-controlled business can readily outperform public companies by taking advantage of family cohesiveness, depth of business understanding, and personal commitment that family members accumulate since childhood.

Many family businesses fail to achieve that potential, however, because they stumble over a few predictable issues that are very hard for boards and especially their leaders to overcome alone.

The Achilles Heel of Family-Controlled Boards
Combined with pitfalls common to all boards (such as rubber-stamping management's decisions), family-controlled boards have particular challenges:
  1. Conflicting individual perspectives and priorities arise as the business progresses into second and third generation leadership;
  2. "Clannishness" appears as more nuclear families are involved; and
  3. Economic setbacks bring distrust of those family members most directly involved in executive management.
These issues are nearly impossible for family members to address directly because of strong family loyalties and respect for the elders that create a culture of collective censorship. 
In This Issue
The Fundamentals of a Successful Strategy
Leadership in Family-Controlled Boards
Developing Leaders
Developing Leaders
One of our organizational client leaders is in the frame of mind that he will retire within a year or so and admits to being unsatisfied that he will leave in place a truly empowered management team. He created over the years an enviable record in leading his department to high levels of performance and client satisfaction. But they are not prepared to think and act strategically, to be able to move beyond the day-to-day operations and consider their 2-3 year horizon.

Although proud of his accomplishments, he was certain that without him around the department would not be able to sustain its current course for long. His assessment was that his team has little capacity to think beyond the way things are done now; no one initiates serious discussions as to how things could or should be different. When we began work, our client's view was that his team needed training. He missed, however, how his own management style of telling, directing and hovering over the work of his team had, in fact, kept his senior managers from emerging as leaders.

With about twelve months to create change after years of ingrained behaviors, the coaching challenge was double: build this leader's awareness of how he had contributed to his staff's disempowerment, and simultaneously guide the team into new behaviors by asking the very questions that have been discouraged till now. Here's the approach we used:

1. Self -awareness

The first step was to connect the leader with the emotions behind his disempowering behavior and how they were rooted in his own values and what he really cares about. In this case, the impatience and intolerance stem from a relentless drive to deliver consistently high quality service efficiently. Once that deeper purpose became clear, he was able to communicate it to the team directly rather than be driven by the fear that the team could not carry it out properly. This created better alignment.

2. Different Leadership

While remaing true to his values and care, the leader could now ask big picture questions about their system, as well as issues several years out instead of delving into day-to-day details. Instead of giving answers, he was able to explore with the team how to prepare for needed change. 

By changing his perspective to acknowledge that his team does possess the capacity to strategize, the leader was able to invite them into open and frank conversations vital to the team's future. New leadership begins to be developed not by training individuals to be leaders but by releasing the micro-managing style of the leader. Moreover, these larger, "missing" conversations that empower individuals and teams are essential for leaders to take their staff through any significant change effort.
 
Scott Brumburgh
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